Lance blinked his eyes. He blinked his eyes again. That didn’t seem to do it, so he squeezed his eyes shut as hard as he could, then opened them again.

The big black ball was gone. There had been a big black ball there a second ago, Lance could have sworn. Lance had been the first Cobra over the hill and for a second he thought he had just seen the kid – what’s-his-name, the one Dylan had it in for so bad –jump into a hole in the big ball and then – poof! The ball was gone. It seemed no amount of blinking would bring it back.

Dylan and Brian huffed and puffed to the top of the rise, overlooking the spot where the Orb had been a moment before. Lance simply stared at the empty spot with his mouth open.

“You see him?” Dylan gasped, trying to catch his breath.

Lance looked at Dylan. Lance couldn’t express himself in words very well. He knew what he wanted to explain would sound crazy, even though he was pretty sure that the amazing disappearing Orb had been real. However, he was absolutely positive that Dylan would never believe him and, furthermore, he had a pretty good inkling that Dylan would punch him for it.

“Did you see him?” Dylan asked again, menacingly this time.

Finally Lance just shook his head “no.” It was easier.

* * * *

Milo couldn’t see.

Inside the Orb it was completely, 100% pitch black. It was so black he couldn’t see his own hands, even when he waved them an inch in front of his face. It was freaking him out.

Just a few seconds earlier, the peculiar magnifying halo around the Orb had suddenly vanished and a perfectly-Milo-sized doorway had slid open in the face of the Orb. Acting on pure adrenaline, Milo had jumped into the Orb and instantly the doorway had shut behind him with a SHOOMP, leaving him in absolute darkness.

It occurred to Milo now that perhaps jumping into the mysterious black Orb of unknown origin had been a mistake.

Then slowly, Milo’s’ eyes adjusted. No, that wasn’t quite right. It was more like the Orb was adjusting to Milo’s eyes. The realization gave Milo a little chill.

There wasn’t a single light source. Instead, the interior surface of the Orb had illuminated a faint light pattern. Milo thought it was a simple grid at first, but on closer inspection there seemed to be deeper patterns below the surface.

He looked around, but the Orb was otherwise empty. There were no control panels, no buttons, no levers, no screens, no gauges, no meters. The floor under his feet was flat – not round, not the absolute bottom of the sphere – and about two-thirds of the sphere rose above him. At first Milo thought there was nowhere to sit, but when he looked again he saw there were raised sections of the black surface that looked almost like couches, and these were soft and comfy to the touch – almost like a rubber foam.

Milo thought it was strange that he hadn’t noticed the seats at first. The he had the unnerving thought that perhaps they weren’t there when he first looked. Maybe, like the light level, the Orb was adjusting to him. This led to the more creepy thought that, if this was the case, then the Orb was somehow watching him, leading to the downright terrifying idea that the Orb might somehow be able to think--

Milo shuddered. No, that couldn’t be right. He must have just overlooked the seats – it was still dark, after all. He let out a nervous breath.

Milo touched the interior wall of the Orb with his fingertips. He thought he felt a faint thrumming, as if there were an engine running, or as if someone was playing loud music in a room next door. But of course there was only silence. Milo walked along the inside curve of the Orb, gliding his hand along.

As Milo walked, he couldn’t be sure, but he could swear he could just barely see through the Orb’s wall. Milo cupped his hands and put his face to the wall—

--and then the wall vanished. To his astonishment, Milo was suddenly looking at Dylan, Brian, and Lance coming down the rise and heading right towards him! Milo jerked back in surprise. The surface of the Orb had become transparent in one spot, creating a sort of porthole about three feet by three feet, exactly centered on Milo’s face – a perfect size and shape for him to look through. It was so clear that Milo flicked it with his fingernail to make sure it wasn’t a hole and hit something very hard and perfectly invisible. He stuck the fingernail in his mouth, a little shocked.

Milo was sure the Cobras must have spotted him – he imagined what he must look like peering out a window in a giant black Orb. But Dylan wasn’t looking at him at all. In fact, Dylan and Brian were looking in every direction but Milo’s. Only Lance, with his mouth open, seemed to be looking in the Orb’s vicinity although not, Milo noticed, directly at him. How could they not be freaking out about the giant black Orb? Milo thought.

It was almost like they couldn’t see it at all.

Milo couldn’t hear anything, but watched as Dylan came forward, fists balled, looking all over the place, somehow – impossibly – not seeing the Orb. He came forward and stopped right in front of Milo. They were almost nose to nose. If Dylan came any closer he would smack right into the Orb. From here Milo could see in close detail the red mark on Dylan’s face where Milo had punched him, and the trickle of blood running down his nose and into the crack on his upper lip.

Milo smiled a little, feeling suddenly safe and a little giddy. Milo fought the overwhelming urge to giggle like a lunatic. This could be, he thought, the beginning of my going insane. Ever since he was little, Milo was always half-convinced he could go insane any minute, and now here, finally, was some evidence of it.

Finally, apparently giving up, Dylan turned and head back they way they’d come, and the three of them trudged back up the rise. Only Lance kept looking back over his shoulder every few seconds, as if he thought Milo – or something – might suddenly appear again like magic.

Milo let out a long breath. He had won, this time. There was still tomorrow. Maybe he would hide in the Orb every day –

Then instantly the hole vanished. Milo was looking at the black wall again. He froze – he didn’t like the suddenness of that. And then Milo noticed a single red dot was lit up on the wall. He didn’t know when that had appeared. He didn’t know what the little dot meant exactly, but somehow, Milo got the uneasy feeling that maybe the dot meant him.

Slowly, Milo started to back away. He reached his hand back to feel for the door that had let him in…and felt only solid wall. Milo ran his hands over the surface, feeling for anything that might suggest a door or a hatch – a seam, a hinge, a handle, anything. But it was perfectly smooth, just flat wall, as if the doorway had never existed.

He was trapped inside the Orb with no way out.

Panic rose up in Milo’s throat. Not just panic, but a little vomit too, which Milo swallowed back down with a grimace. Suddenly fighting Dylan and the other Cobras didn’t sound so bad – not as bad as being trapped inside a giant coffin-like black Orb.

Milo started pounding on the Orb. “OPEN UP!” he shouted. “LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT RIGHT NOW!”

Nothing happened.

And then a doorway SHOOMPED open, blasting him with sunlight. Milo couldn’t see how it opened – it looked more like the shell of the Orb simply created a hole for him – but Milo didn’t really care too much about the details at this moment. He dived through the hole and came tumbling out into the dirt.

Milo scrambled backwards on his hands and feet away from the Orb, staring up at it, the doorway still open in its surface.

Then the Orb was gone. He didn’t see it vanish exactly. It just was no longer there.

Or it’s invisible, Milo thought. And a few seconds later he was over the next rise, running like a madman for home.